Kodaline: In a Perfect World – review

Thursday 20 June 2013 16.30 EDT
First published on Thursday 20 June 2013 16.30 EDT

It's hard to believe, but a decade of Coldplay hasn't sated the public's appetite for music made with a figurative wind machine gushing in the wings. Case in point: the debut by this young Dublin quartet, whose speciality is the gusty, disconsolate anthem, is expected to chart at No 1 this week. It will likely hang around the top 10 for months, because Kodaline have already mastered the craft of piling chorus upon unshakable chorus. Most of these 11 songs contain a killer hook, such as the one that transforms High Hopes from wobbly-lipped ballad to hair-tearing tearjerker. Singer Steve Garrigan has modelled himself on vocalists who are experts at jerking the tears, including Art Garfunkel and Keane's Tom Chaplin, in the service of songs that require him constantly to sound as if he's on the verge of a seizure. All told, there's a lot of bodice-ripping emotion to take in, and it's this, rather than the lack of original ideas, that makes In a Perfect World hard to take in large doses.